


Resonant Echo

by luckthebard (wbh)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Ambition, Essek Week - Day 3 "Wizard", Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wbh/pseuds/luckthebard
Summary: Echo Knights of the Kryn Dynasty are lauded for their ability to pull shadows of themselves from discarded timelines onto the battlefield. No Dunamancy wizard has ever learned this carefully guarded military secret. Essek Thelyss, however, has never cared much for laws or tradition.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 144





	Resonant Echo

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the fact that the "Resonant Echo" spell did not make it into the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, causing Matt to declare it an "Essek specialty."

Essek Thelyss had never wanted to be an Echo Knight. He knew his own capabilities, and knew he wasn’t cut out for such a brutish career. It would have been a waste of his magical talents to confine him to a role like that. Essek had never wanted anything to do with the military at all, if he was honest about it, though he knew that Battle Mages frequently accompanied Echo Knights into combat for support and utility. Whenever the idea briefly crossed his mind, he almost immediately dismissed it. Much better to stay locked away alone in his tower and be thought a coward, than willingly throw himself into the unnecessary and futile madness of war. 

No, Essek didn’t have any desire to join the ranks of what his brother Verin called the Dynasty’s Greatest Heroes. What he _did_ desire, so much that it almost pained him, was to know how their magic worked.

Echo Knights fought with Dunamancy, pulling a version of themselves from an unrealized timeline to aid them in battle. An Echo, it was called, giving the knights their name. Essek had spent many hours as a youth watching the Knights spar, with their shadow forms flitting in and out of reality on the training grounds. Had spent more time yet as a young man watching with burning envy as his own younger brother struggled to summon an echo for the first time. But it was a closely guarded secret, how the Knights summoned their shadows. By the will of the Luxon, or so the Bright Queen said, it was their traditional knowledge and theirs alone. Essek could do many things with Dunamancy. He could conquer gravity, manipulate time, change matter and density and destroy with crushing force. And that was all allowed. But an Echo, by the Queen’s laws and Dynastic tradition, was denied him.

Verin, who had always been given so much more regard than Essek just because of his personable manner and impressive physique, was allowed this when he was not. Essek had long bristled over how the Den treated them, with many forgetting that Essek was the elder brother when they saw the powerful fighter and the slim mage side by side. Verin gained praise just by existing, praise that had only come to Essek when he’d invented his first spell - a spell that he now used reflexively every day to ensure his feet never touched the ground, that gravity held no meaning for him, to remind everyone of his power and authority. Essek was floating gently in the crowd surrounding the Echo Knight’s training grounds the day Verin summoned his first Echo. His fellow Knights whooped and cheered as Essek clapped politely, unsmiling. There in the sparring grounds stood a grey shadow of his younger brother. Outdoing him again. And Essek of Den Thelyss, chief Dumanatic researcher and archmage of the Bright Queen’s court, a prodigy who achieved those honors in only his first life, was barred from researching how his brother had done it. 

“Then petition to have the law changed, if it inconveniences you so much,” Verin had said, exasperated, after the fourth or fifth time Essek had tried to convince him of the merits of a mage having an Echo as well. “You, of all people, surely know exactly how to manipulate the court to get that done.” Verin didn’t sound like he was complimenting Essek, but Essek preened at the idea his brother thought he had that kind of pull with the Bright Queen. 

“If you get special dispensation or the commander changes the rules, then I’ll be happy to show you,” Verin continued, frowning at Essek’s lack of chastisement at his disapproval. “But until then, maybe this is a good chance for you to practice patience. You know, it’s ok to not know something, to just let something be! It would be good for you,” Verin laughed at that, clapping Essek on the shoulder as if they were friends, and walking away.

Even if he'd failed to gain his brother’s help directly, Essek was not about to give up. Scrying, after all, was not a magic forbidden to him by ancient and unreasonable Dynastic law. He watched his brother carefully in the training grounds through the spell, looking for components or somatic gestures, any hint as to how the Knights worked their skills. When his scry succeeded for a third day in a row, Essek’s lips curled up into an unkind sneer. He’d always known his brother was weak-willed, and now he had the proof.

It took many days of magical spying for Essek to have a breakthrough, but it finally came. Not from his brother, who was irritatingly coy in his use of magic, but from his sparring partner. Whoever she was, that Knight was more clumsy with her components, and Essek caught the unmistakable glitter of a shard of onyx in her hand as she carved a line through the air, shadow leaking out from where it looked like her stone had made a tear in reality. A large rock, that component was. Probably worth a few gold, if Essek knew his gemstones. 

Essek smiled into the scrying vision, safe in the privacy of his research tower. His brother was wrong. Useless restrictions based on reasoning as flimsy as tradition and faith were barriers to true progress. He would be able to learn so much more about time and potentiality, once he created a version of this spell for himself. Not for the first time, Essek's thoughts drifted to the Luxon Beacons themselves, the source of Dumanantic power -- equally guarded from unbiased and unhindered research. And his mind itched again, refocusing on yet another puzzle he was forbidden from solving, locked away in Luxon temples and the Bright Queen’s court. He’d solved this problem, had he not? Why stop now?

* * *

Essek rarely used his Resonant Echo spell, except in the privacy of his own home. He’d longed to wave it in his brother’s face, but thankfully he wasn’t that self-destructive. And he was saved the temptation in any case, when Verin was reassigned to command the Kyrn forces at Bazzoxan. His brother had been unusually stoic the day he’d left, telling Essek he hoped this new assignment would finally bring him the respect Essek had in the Den. Essek had struggled to keep his face blank, unsure how his brother could have missed the praise and regard heaped on him while Essek had struggled for every scrap of the esteem and fear he now saw in people’s eyes. He’d shivered at his mother’s cold agreement with Verin’s stated need to prove himself, and wondered as his brother’s moorbounder leapt away if perhaps he had missed a chance at decades of comradery instead of rivalry. 

It was years later, then, before Essek finally showed the spell to someone else. 

Standing in the house of Den Nein, the strange, unpredictable mercenary family who had burst their way into the Dynasty’s favor, Essek starred into the faces of a red-haired human and an alarmingly blue tiefling, and thought about potential and change and time. 

"Perhaps, do you enjoy the idea of drawing the potential from discarded timelines?" he began, introducing yet another reckless Dunamancy lesson to his unofficial and unapproved pupil, a human from the Dwendalian Empire. While his audience, Jester the tiefling, looked only mildly impressed, Caleb Widogast’s eyes lit up, full of life in a way Essek rarely saw on the subdued and intense human, and he couldn’t find it in himself to regret bringing up knowledge even he was not supposed to have. 

He taught Caleb "Immovable Object" first. It felt safer, less forbidden. He wasn’t supposed to be teaching Caleb _any_ Dunamancy, after all, but what was a little more treason on top of his already vast pile of offenses? Caleb and Jester both enjoyed the spell, Jester eagerly testing and playing on the chair Essek had affixed in the air. But Essek had already opened up the possibility of discarded timelines, and he remembered the eager, hungry look in Caleb’s eyes. It reminded him of himself. It was like looking in a mirror. And so against his better judgement, he flipped to the back of his spellbook. To the hidden pages he’d crafted in secret, with his own personal glyphs. 

"Here is something a little more... interesting. And I will request that you be careful when using this in any public space outside of Rosohna." 

Or in Rosohna as well, he perhaps should have said, but something about the hungry look in Caleb’s eyes had made him unaccountably bold and reckless. 

Caleb, for the first time in any of their Dunamancy lessons, looked hesitant. 

"Are you putting yourself at risk, by sharing these with me?" Caleb asked.

 _Yes_ , the remaining rational corner of Essek’s brain declared, _more than you know_. 

"Maybe, he said instead, “but let that be an extension of my trust in you and your friends. I expect hopefully the same trust in return."

"It is fairly established, I would like to think."

"Good."

"We are friends now."

Essek paused, the unending craving for magical knowledge momentarily forgotten as he saw a new look in Caleb’s eyes. Earnest, open, truth. Something welled up inside of him that he didn't know he could feel. He wanted to give Caleb this gift -- but not for himself, or his own foolish pride and arrogance. He wanted Caleb to know too. He found himself bursting to share the secrets that had been denied him so long. To share them with...a friend.

"I like that," Essek said, surprising himself by smiling. "Friends."


End file.
